Quezon City, Philippines –Just as essential to the Indigenous Peoples is the early morning for farming, so is their choice to be the earliest today to voice out the realities of their lives before the SONA of President Gloria Arroyo presents her own version of reality.

“We have heard Arroyo before make the SONA, and we have not heard her tell the truth about the situation of the Indigenous Peoples,” says Peter Duyapat, an Ifugao leader.

At seven in the morning, over a hundred IPs from all over Luzon who are convening the SIPA 2009 (State of the Indigenous Peoples Address) in UP Diliman, marched in front of the UP-Ayala Cyber Hub along Commonwealth Avenue to merge with a hundred strong more IPs from KAMP (Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas).

Members of various indigenous peoples in Luzon expressed their disgust for GMAs 8 years of presidency in front of the Commission of Human Rigths (CHR) the morning before th State Of the Nation Address (SONA). They are in Manila for a 3-day conference dubbed State of the Indigenous Peoples Address (SIPA) in UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City. (LRC-KSK/FoE Phil./AKP-images/Buck Pago)

With their banner “SIPAin si Gloria”, they expressed their strong opposition to charter change that will further the President’s reign.

“Under her administration, our lives have become harsher, as she has allowed foreign mining companies come and take our lands.”  Duyapat is from Brgy. Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, which is the mining site of the Oceania Gold, an Australian mining corporation. “We cannot allow her to use charter change to prolong her stay.”

“The government, particularly the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), is in connivance with the mining companies.  They allow the companies to operate even without our genuine free and prior informed consent,” laments Librada Isidro, an Alangan Mangyan from Mindoro.

Duyapat and Isidro are both participants of the 3-day gathering of Indigenous Peoples from Luzon to present the real State of the Indigenous Peoples Address (SIPA).

“For the indigenous peoples, Arroyo leaves behind continued discrimination, rising human rights violations and legitimized land grabbing in the name of illusory development. This is her real legacy,” according to Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC-KsK), a legal and policy advocacy institution, closely working with the indigenous peoples. LRC is the organizer of SIPA.

The mobilization also expresses their strong commitment to continue with the struggle for self-determination. They have come all the way to the cities to expose the worsening conflicts in their own lands resulting from PGMA’s neo-liberal economic policies that allow more operations of extractive industries, land grabbing, militarization other state projects that do more damage than development especially to the communities of IPs.

“Eight years of Gloria is enough!” shouts Ponyong Kadlos in Mangyan. Kadlos is the spokesperson of the ‘Alangan-Mangyan’ delegation. “She has done nothing for us but to make us poorer.” Their community is now under threat from large-scale mining operations with the entry of the ‘Aglubang & Intex Mining Corporation’ in their ancestral domain.

IPs along with their allies and other supporters marched along the highway towards the elliptical road playing their traditional musical instruments and back to the side of UP, stopping in front of the commercial stalls and bus terminal in Philcoa before going back to UP.

The SIPA, organized by LRC, is being held in Quezon City and Cagayan de Oro for the IPs in Mindanao, simultaneously.